ALBERTM.JOSEPH

JOSEPH ALBERT M. JOSEPH passed away on November 9, 2012 at the age of 84. He was known as the man who taught the world to write, and his Put It In Writing book and course became the most widely used business writing course in the English-speaking world. The son of Hungarian immigrants who had fled Hungary during the Holocaust, Albert served in the United States Army at the age of 19 in occupied Japan where he was Staff Sergeant. Upon returning home, he used the GI bill to attend and graduate from Ohio University. As Editor of Handling & Shipping, a trade magazine, Albert noticed that the writing that came across his desk, in spite of being written by journalists, left much to be desired. He then realized that if journalists had bad writing habits, the rest of the business world would certainly have a similar need for writing improvement. He devised a classroom writing course and persuaded Fenn College (later Case Western Reserve University) to allow him to moonlight teaching writing evenings to local Cleveland business people. One of his students in that first class was the Training Director of Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO). He asked Albert if he ever thought of conducting his writing course to companies, and the two of them later introduced the course, called Put It In Writing, to upper management and Engineering at SOHIO, where the course was an enormous success. SOHIO referred Albert to Republic Steel and NASA, and suddenly the course was in great demand in Cleveland. Word spread about Put It In Writing and soon Albert could no longer teach the course himself for the many organizations demanding it. So he used his knowledge from having a Photography minor in college to assemble a slide and cassette version of the course that could be sent to corporate trainers, along with a workbook complete with exercises. The course thus became portable, taught by a company's Training Department who would teach the course to the organization's employees. He called his new company the Industrial Writing Institute; the name was changed a few years later to International Writing Institute because the British wanted their own version of Put It In Writing, and a U.K. distributor helped in "teaching the English to write better English," as Albert used to say. In the interim, by popular demand from his clients, he wrote Executive Guide to Grammar, a self-study book that dealt with an admittedly boring topic in a very entertaining way. The book has sold more than 500,000 copies. By then, the list of clients for his Put It In Writing course was a virtual who's who of the Fortune 500 and the U.S. Government. More than 10,000 engineers, scientists, and upper management employees were trained at General Motors, Ford, Farmers Insurance, Du Pont, Deloitte, Boeing, Chase, and AT&T. Those companies received such great benefit from Put It In Writing that they customized the course for their respective employees. More than 60,000 took the course at AT&T alone. Government clients included Social Security Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and many more. Albert no longer taught the course himself in person except for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who required he teach the course in person. He did indeed do just that, teaching the CIA in Langley, VA twice monthly for 11 years. With more than 1.5 million Put It In Writing books sold across the world, it became the most widely used business writing course in the English-speaking world. Although International Writing Institute closed in 1995 when Albert retired, book sales continue to this day. And an eBook version of Put It In Writing will soon be available online via Amazon.com. Albert also helped found the Plain Talk movement in 1972, a consumer advocacy group that was instrumental in getting approval for state laws calling for clearly worded legal documents. The Plain Talk movement lives on today, with a website of its own sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Albert is survived by his wife of 59 years, Dylene, children Paul (Eileen)of Solon; Bill of Medina, and Cindy Saltzer (Michael) of Solon. He also had eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

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